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State of the Illustration

I have no doubt that I can draw. It is something that I am very proud of, and at times, places me in a position to be envied by some of the people I know.

Another thing I have no doubt about is that Dave the Direman, while fun, seems to be lacking any strong visuals at this point in time. It doesn't have the artistic equivalent of two burly hands taking you by your shirt collar and forcefully pulling you in for a closer look.

Do I have any excuses? Sure. I have plenty of those. Who doesn't? Of course, if I spend my time blaming the obstacles in my life, then I am wasting time that could be spent honing my artistic skills and improving the look of the strips.

Dee does a fine job writing for this and I see very few requests to change what he's doing, and am puzzled why it goes through me instead of going straight to the nifty "Feedback on Comic Strips" section in the forums, but I do receive quite a few comments on how I tend to run between Awesome like the "Monolith" strip, to simply Vanilla like the current "Funniest Joke Ever" strip. That needs to change if I want Dave the Direman to receive and deserve a true online following.

Over the course of the next few strips I'll be attempting a few things with the cast and visuals. I believe that you'll be pleased with the end results, though I acknowledge that I'll have a few rough edges to work out at first. Hopefully that'll get some of you to take a closer look and maybe even draw in new blood.